Hacked Hol

Eleanor shows her spiffy apartment. Love the clean lines, but wait, what’s that mess of wires? No worries. A hacked Hol to the rescue.

She says, “I have a small loft which serves as kitchen, lounge, dining room and study. I carefully planned the space and I use my iMac as a TV/DVD player, the bit that let the whole space down was my printer sitting in a mess of wires.

the mess

Most of the charging stations on Ikeahacker were too small to hide my big fat printer, so I thought I’d need a larger storage area. Bearing in mind all the concerns voiced about ventilation on charging stations I thought the Hol box/table would alow plenty of air flow. In order to access the printer and because of the slope of the roof, a top opening wasn’t practical, so I hacked it:

- I sawed the feet off one of the long edge pieces.

- I sawed holes in the other long piece to allow plugs to feed through one end and wires out the other.

- The base board needed to be trimmed so that it sits flush with the side pieces

- A piece of wood on the bottom of the board to act as reinforcement and receive the hinges.

- L brackets fix the base to the sides hinges allow the front to drop down (I was going to add sliding supports to the side, but the door drops flat to the floor so it didn’t seem necessary).

- Magnetic closures at the top keep the door closed.

- The top sits in place without additional fixing (I wanted to allow as much access as possible), but you could always fix it with extra L brackets.

- Electrical ties hold in place:1. A surge protected gang for the computer equipment2. An individually switched gang for chargers so that I can leave them plugged in without wasting electricity3. USB hub4. WiFi modem

There’s room for the printer and my two external hard drives. The square Hol would be a smaller alternative for smaller printers.

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Jules IKEAHacker "I am Jules, the engine behind IKEAHackers and the one who keeps this site up and running. My mission is to capture all the wonderful, inspiring, clever hacks and ideas for our much loved IKEA items".

24 Responses to Hacked Hol

Absolutely love this. I bought a HOL about 5 years ago (the square one cube, not the rectangular one), then it sat in my garage, unassembled, until last year, when I finally got around to staining it a dark black/brown. I’ve always loved the aesthetics of the HOL.

Currently the HOL is in use in my living room as a side table/storage for my son’s construction paper; however, this is a MUCH better usage of it! I’m so inspired by this! I shall hack my HOL sometime in the near future!

I wish I had second HOL cube to place on top to create two tiers of electronics storage, as I have two printers. They might have them at my local IKEA…I will have to go take a look.

And like Nick Lo says above: “IKEA designers take it as a hint: Tech crap storage, we need it!”

Exactly! Tech crap storage I could definitely use.

I’ve had this little system for the past 5 years where I tie my wires and cores with either black rubberbands or black electrical wires to the hind legs of my computer desk. They manage to systemize my wires – but I can still see them! So this is definitely a well-needed idea that I will most definitely take into use sometime. Thank you, cool hack! -DH

The Hol was out of stock here in Blighty for ages, a nice ikea lady said they were having trouble with their suppliers. I had to stalk the website waiting for it to come back in to stock. Fingers crossed it’ll re-appear where you are.

Rolo said… Who makes the swivel desk chair?It’s a knockoff/copy of the Eames Soft Pad office chair in white leather, I got mine off ebay.

Having picked on yesterday’s cat litter box I have to now “acknowledge” this for its creativity! I’ve been looking for a solution to house all the server, HDD, tech crap that didn’t look like it would cause too much heat build up.

Unfortunately I think Hol may have been discontinued in Australia IKEA. I think I remember seeing it earlier but it’s not on their site.

With the number of hacks of this nature though I’d suggest that any IKEA designers take it as a hint: Tech crap storage, we need it!

Very cool (for the equipment too)! I couldn’t find the Hol Storage table on the Ikea USA website, though. And I don’t think Ikea would call it by another name in the US. Maybe Ikea isn’t shipping this product to the US?

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